Foxy Floating Cinema

On Friday evening we went to the Floating Cinema at Three Mills to watch The Fantastic Mr Fox. Luckily the weather held out and we had a really lovely evening, the highlight of which was seeing the Bean, Boggis, Bunce and Mr Fox maquettes.

Approaching schoolgirl levels of excitement

APRIL

FEBRUARY

I’ve seen some shockers this month, most notably Mission to Mars – avoid it like the plague.

I Saw This: Never Let Me Go

Subtle and subdued, Never Let Me Go deals with the quiet repression of three young friends as they grow up at a vaguely sinister boarding school and into a strangely familiar, yet all together different, Britain. Throughout there are hints of an unsaid fear; people are reluctant to approach them and they are not allowed outside of their school boundaries. Their world is isolated and cut off from everyone else. When the true horror of their situation is revealed it is uncomplainingly accepted and on they trudge.

It is visually beautiful with muted colours and bleak weather and an ageless quality that could just as easily be the present or 50 years before. The big thing that lets it down is the way in which they completely, obediently submit to their fate is never explained. They don’t put up any kind of fight. But perhaps that’s the point, maybe that’s where their humanity is lost and the quiet fear that rumbles under the surface is realised.

Pink Panther

DePatie-Freleng's Pink Panther main titles are one of my favourite opening sequences ever. If only everyone started films like this.

I Saw This: Biutiful

In Biutiful Alejandro González Iñárritu’s stark, poverty ridden vision of Barcelona paints a heavy veil of misery from the start that continues to haunt to the end.

Javier Bardem is excellent as the world weary, mournful Uxbal, he walks with his head down, shouldering his burdens. He suggests umbrella selling as a way to earn money and the reply is that it never rains in Barcelona. But for Uxbal it does rain, a storm of anguish and misfortune that at times becomes difficult to watch. As we see him try to put his affairs in order everything goes wrong for him. Perhaps if it had just been Uxbal it would have been easier to stomach but Iñárritu throws everything at the audience, person after person struggles – nothing is easy for anyone and there’s never any let up or humour just a bleak, desperate struggle to survive.

Uxbal isn’t a hero, he isn’t even a nice person on the surface of it; he exploits people in desperate situations for his own profit. But there is something incredibly human about him. Iñárritu doesn’t encourage us to question him or look for answers; his actions are never explored or excused. Uxbal can see the dead and there is knowledge of an afterlife but it offers no solace or answers. Uxbal doesn’t find himself in his situation because of a higher deity; his actions and manipulation of those in need is never judged in that way. Buitiful doesn’t ask us to be ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and makes for a brave and unsentimental tale.

JANUARY

This month I mostly watched.

Thanks to I Have No Sense Of Time where I basically robbed this idea from

I Saw This: The Lavender Hill Mob

The world is ours

Just before Christmas I bought myself an Ealing Comedies boxset and last night I finally finished it off with The Lavender Hill Mob. So often overshadowed by The Ladykillers and Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob is my favourite of the lot.

Set in 1950s London, Alec Guinness plays a reliable bank administrator with hopes of stealing the bullion he works with and retiring a millionaire. A chance meeting with Stanley Holloway’s eccentric souvenir maker provides the spark of inspiration needed to get the riches.

A long and complicated plan is forged that involves luring a criminal into their plot, a fake kidnapping and a holiday abroad. What could go wrong?

Everything, naturally. What follows is a riotous, chaotic rampage through London and Paris with the gold. Passport officials, laughing school girls and bungling policemen combine to try to thwart them and there’s an excellent, dizzying scene with the Eiffel Tower.

Timelessly funny.

I Saw This: Black Swan

It’s been a long time since a film has been released that almost everyone has seen and has a strong opinion on; it’s a fairly even spread of applause and annoyance – I’ve heard everything from “loved it” to feeling “cheated and violated” after watching it.

I’m not sure that it really deserves the divide. I found it fun to watch but lacking in any real development and brimming with outrageous clichés. Darren Aronofsky is anything but subtle and from the start we’re treated to the first glimpse of the split personality that dominates the film.

Nina – fragile, tense, thorough and prone to self harm is awarded the role of her life playing the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. She is perfect for the White Swan but there is uncertainty about her ability to embody the edgier Black Swan. Pressure is piled on her from every angle, pressure to succeed and pressure to fail. Her mollycoddling mother, her sleazy director, her jealous fellow dancers and her own unerring ambition crush down on her.

She is under constant scrutiny. Lily, her rebellious, confident understudy seems to be lurking in every shadow waiting to steal the part from under her feet, her mother’s haunting portraits laugh at her, her own reflection betrays her. We enter a rapidly deteriorating world of doppelgangers, mirrors, dreams, slips of consciousness and fantasy until reality is lost and we can no longer define the true from the imaginary.

While in many ways completely silly, Black Swan has flashes of great paranoid horror and classic suspense but it’s undermined by an exaggerated ending and comical villains.